Writing myself out of a corner

After weeks of continual rain (morning, noon and night), today was supposed to be a sunny morning (with rain later, ‘natch). Eh, not so much, though the sun did poke through around mid-morning.

But, so what! Even had it been sunny, I had already made my decision to plop myself down on the patio and force myself to write some more of “What Now?”. And it is “forcing”, but I only have myself to blame.

Regular readers know I wrote the first two books of the Jeremy Shuttle Adventures trilogy at the beach. Awash in sunshine and inspired by the majestic Atlantic Ocean rolling onto the shore, I banged out hundreds of pages of story either on a laptop (for “What if?”) or on pads of paper (for “What Next?”).

But it is late July and there have been precious few mornings with weather conducive to writing (water tends to have an adverse impact on both computers and paper). Frustrating? You bet. Worse, because I seemed to have “boxed myself in” when it comes to writing. Try as I might, I couldn’t get up the enthusiasm or imagination to write at home, either on the computer or paper. Seemingly, I had mental blocked myself into only writing at the beach. Egads!

Determined to break that deadlock, I entered a writing contest promoted by my publisher. It was a trifling thing, less than 1,000 words of pure silliness, but it was composed on the ‘puter and finished within the required 24-hour time span. The matter of winning was immaterial; the matter of actually writing something at the house was cathartic.

So it was today that I wiped down the patio table, cleaned off the swivel chair and sat on the back patio with my pad in my lap and my pen in my hand and began to write. Stumbling, at first, but then with more comfort and finally with something resembling grace I managed to beat out a full chapter of the book. ’tweren’t much, but in relation to my “block”, it might as been a whole book!

The real test will be tomorrow and the chance to repeat (and expand) upon today’s small success. While surely riding lawnmowers and leaf blowers offer less inspiration than rolling waves and splashing children, I am hopeful I can outlast this uncommonly bad weather and get back on track to finishing the book, be it in front of blue seas or green grass.